So we've been a bit remiss in posting lately. We have countless things we've been meaning to post about, but life has been rather crazy lately (and on top of that, the Olympics has kept us fairly sleep deprived)! At any rate, I wanted to write a long overdue post about some great food we've had lately.

It bears mention that I've been getting more and more obsessed with cooking and good food -- I'm becoming a wannabe "foodie" of sorts. The past couple weeks we've been eating lots of vegetables and a fair quantity of meatless meals, which is better for the environment, and also a fun change! We love going to "Ron's", a produce market set up in an old gas station two blocks from our house (actually called Locally Grown Gardens, but the owner's name is Ron). He sells local in-season produce year round - read about him here. We stop by almost every weeknight to get our veggies for the night. Our new plan is to try to avoid taking big trips to the grocery store and just get the food we need for one or two meals each night. Seeing that we have Ron's two blocks away and the new Fresh Market two blocks away, it makes it quite easy to literally run (or walk) to the store to get food for the night!

The other day Alex found a recipe on a food blog that seemed enticing and perfect for the ingredients we normally pick up at Ron's - zucchini trifolati with cherry tomatoes and basil. The blog is great - the guy who writes it always makes amazing food and has beautiful pictures to accompany it. He provides inspiration for aspiring foodies like myself! (He made an amazing looking paella recently, which I have been itching to make but feel might be a bit over my head at this point. I think I need a beginner's paella recipe.)

Anyway, as was mentioned on his blog, the zucchini trioflati is more of an idea than a recipe - throw zucchini, garlic, tomatoes, fresh basil and olive oil in a pan and cook to perfection. I was suprised at how wonderful the combination of flavors were, though there was really nothing special about the recipe itself. It really brought out the natural flavor of each ingredient.
We recommended the recipe to my friend Erin, who tried it out with veggies from her CSA - see her review here. She has a great blog about all her culinary adventures, among other things. I highly recommend it! (She also reviews Minneapolis restaurants with her husband Ben in this blog.)

I also wanted to mention the most recent amazing meal made for us by Lynne and Kirk, our friends with whom we have a recently formed tradition of cooking delicious food for each other every couple weeks. They outdid themselves and made a splendid Cajun feast, which Kirk blogged about (including recipes) here. I'll mention the menu because I love reading menus (I live vicariously through them - it's almost as good as eating the food myself):
Popcorn shrimp with basil mayonnaise
Blackened chicken breasts
Maque choux
Green beans with bacon and almonds
Bananas foster
It was incredibly delicious, and so much fun to eat and enjoy the company. I was most blown away by the maque choux and the bananas foster, so much so that I was compelled to make them again as soon as possible! We made both the next weekend with Alex's family since we were going to visit, and it seemed that everyone enjoyed them a lot! I highly recommend both recipes, and the bananas foster is a great easy dessert (though we found it difficult to get any sort of flame both times - any recommendations on how to do it?).

See below for pictures of our meal:
More food posts to come :)
~Sonja

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I had bananas foster recently - did you have a butane torch (simple ones are really inexpensive) or a lighter? Also, they lit a small portion of the warmed liqueur/rum in a spoon dropping that into the pan to make the fire. just my observations.